SC issues notices to two dailies for misreporting story

ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court (SC) on Wednesday issued notices to Urdu newspaper Jang and English daily The News for allegedly misreporting a court story.

The two publications, in their lead stories on Wednesday, had reported that Chief Justice of Pakistan Mian Saqib Nisar, while hearing a suo motu case of illegal construction in Bani Gala, had “remarked that the current government lacked capability and planning”.

However, Chief Justice Nisar distanced himself from those remarks on Wednesday, adding that “this news is untrue”.

“Both the newspapers ran wrong stories,” Justice Nisar said. “We had talked about the CDA (Capital Development Authority) in the Bani Gala case. There is a recording available of the court’s proceedings; we can play that.”

“[TV] programmes were also done on the basis of this wrong news,” Justice Ijazul Ahsan said, to which Additional Attorney General Nayyer Rizvi added: “Tickers were also run [on the same].”

Later on, in its official notification, the court said: “We are surprised as the court never made such observations about the federal government. [Those] observations were made against the Capital Development Authority. This is an instance of gross misreporting.”

The court issued notices to the publications’ printers, publishers and editors, with the directives to respond by Thursday.